


Natural Disaster

by remembertowrite



Series: Monsoon Season [1]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Episode Tag: 204 Voices Carry, F/M, First time writing something like this, Smut, Tension, lol wtf did I write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:38:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remembertowrite/pseuds/remembertowrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She opens the door to a Richard Strand expression for the history books, a displeasure so thick and viscous it might even descend into ire. It’s a face that causes a creeping chill down her neck and a deviant flash of pleasure at the base of her spine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natural Disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/gifts).



> First attempt at writing smut. So. Yup this happened. For harpersmirror since she gave me the push I needed to actually write this.
> 
> Set a day after the airing of episode 204: Voices Carry.

There’s a sharp trio of rapping knocks that echo through her two-bedroom, the kind of knock that forewarns of a displeased visitor coming to give her a piece of his mind. She hopes it’s not the super again.

Alex thrusts her open laptop onto the coffee table, discarding the warm throw blanket onto the couch, and scrambles to the entryway to peer through the peekhole.

It’s not her super.

With a quick clink of the chain lock and a click of the deadbolt, she opens the door to a Richard Strand expression for the history books, a displeasure so thick and viscous it might even descend into ire. It’s a face that stimulates a creeping chill down her neck and a deviant flash of pleasure at the base of her spine.

There’s something subconsciously delightful in pushing Strand past his limits, in seeing him shred the buttoned-up formality.

A dark corner of her mind remarks that, if she’s going to hell, at least he’ll be there with her.

“Hi,” Alex says, tingeing her voice with a hesitation absent from her thoughts.

Strand brushes past her into her apartment without salutation. She observes him cross his arms and pace back and forth, back and forth in front of her coffee table. She shuts the door and does all the locks up for good measure. (Amalia’s at the studio and then heading to Nic’s tonight… she hopes.)

She fixates on how his left index finger taps impatiently on his opposite wrist as he addresses her.

“Hi,” she says again, this time to the floor.

She hears rather than sees his deep inhale, presumably to regain some sense of decorum, to drown out the rage.

“You weren’t at the studio. Nic said I’d find you here.”

“Well, yes, this is where I live.” She meets his eyes with a smile. Sometimes he’s so stuffy she can’t help but laugh at his expense. He doesn’t offer the typical wry grin in response.

She misses the Strand of six months ago, the one who was so anal over the tidiness of his tie knot that they’d shown up late to an interview by twenty minutes. (She’d been the one to perfect the presentation of his tie, finishing off with a particularly snappy flourish that he didn’t find amusing.)

Strand is vibrating in an attempt to conceal his anger, but she's energized rather than terrified. The sleeplessness has brought out the recklessness in her, Alex supposes.

“You _wiretapped_ me,” Strand spits out, and the accusation in his voice hints at a disbelief that she’d violate his trust. “You broke the law.”

Alex blanches, offended. How typical of Strand, to accuse her of violating ethics. He’s an insufferable ass that she can’t help but find so _fascinating_. Her fascination can’t trump the blow to her pride as a reporter, though.

“That’s not fair—you weren’t talking to—I’m ethically justified if it’s in pursuit of the truth—”

She fumbles through excuses, and, okay, maybe her behavior was a _little_ sketchy. Paul and Terry certainly thought so. Alex never really wants to curse out her amazing bosses, but what the _fuck_ do they know about dealing with the insufferable Richard Strand on a daily basis?

Strand’s caustic laugh burns her ears with its bitterness.

“‘Pursuit of the truth’? That’s what you think your story is? Prioritizing blatant sensationalism over—”

“You’re being excessively condescending right now.”

“Well, I prefer to _condescend_ you with reality, Alex.”

Her blood boils. She’s irritated at Paul and Terry for cloaking her suspension under the shameful mantle of ‘extended vacation,’ she furious with Nic for siding against her, she’s pissed beyond belief at Strand for invading her home and hurling accusations at her; but most of all she’s angry with herself for letting everything get so bad, for failing to look after her health, for destroying her relationship with the one person she feels like she can relate to better than anyone else at this point.

“Sue me, asshole,” she spits, letting out the virulence and frustration with the past week and the past half year. She gets in his face, flinging out her arms in aggression, in the hope that maybe her wingspan will augment the spitfire rage erupting from her body. (Unlikely, though—Strand’s got more than a foot on her, and she _hates_ how short she is right now.)

“I’m tempted. I have cause, and you’ve disseminated the evidence all over the web,” Strand responds, oddly calm considering the tone and volume of his previous outbursts. His face is angled down, his eyes meeting hers, and suddenly he’s too close for comfort.

She’s always been a sucker for blue eyes. Especially the cool blue irises that dare her to do something drastic, to outmaneuver him.

“You won’t,” she states matter-of-factly, and does the one thing she’s certain he can’t anticipate: she yanks him down with a determined palm on the back of his neck, her short nails stabbing into the exposed flesh just under the edge of his hairline, and pulls him in for a kiss. If nothing else, it will derail his disastrous train of thought. (He _is_ but a man.)

It doesn’t hurt that she’s been nursing an attraction to him since… almost eight months ago? At least since they spent that time together in San Francisco waiting for Sebastian Torres to show up.

(She may have fallen in love. She may, in fact, be absolutely fucked.)

She’s a little taken aback when he returns the kiss, pressing at her mouth with his cherry of a tongue until it snakes between her lips and flicks at her front teeth. It’s inelegant and wild, and she finds herself strangling him in closer with her arms, desperate to devour him entirely. Her shoulder blades collide in pain against the wall of her living room, and she realizes that she’s been pulling him backwards with all of her strength (or he’s been shoving her forward).

He pushes her back against the wall and surfaces for air, his breathing haggard, and it’s a little gratifying to see him reduced to such a state.

“Alex, what—what’s—it’s late, you have work tomorrow, I should go,” he stutters through his hyperventilation, and she can see where the dark pink of her lipstick has stained the corners of his mouth.

“No I don’t,” she responds, curling a strand of his hair around her finger to distract herself from how bitterly angry she is with her coworkers.

Might as well tell the truth. Might help diffuse the threats of a lawsuit (from a man she’s just spent two minutes kissing).

“I’ve been suspended for six weeks.”

“What?” Strand says, already thrown for a loop by her previous actions this evening.

“My producers think I’ve been... too erratic.”

“Well,” he starts, and she cuts him off with another kiss, not ready to hear his opinion of her work performance. He tastes like Crest toothpaste and Earl Gray, and she’s a little disappointed it’s not as appealing as the whiskey and caramel notes detailed in the trash romance novels she borrowed from her mom the last time she visited her parents.

“Please stay, Richard,” she whispers huskily as he breaks the kiss.

She dives in again, her fingers clumsily fumbling with the buttons of his flannel overshirt, and she laughs into his kiss at the ridiculous difficulty of removing his top while her eyes remain closed.

Strand seems frozen, at an impasse, until he surfaces for air and starts to undo the buttons for her. His expression finally, _finally_ , registers as something other than anger or confusion, and she’s pleased at his faint grin of gratification.

She helps him tug at the flannel sleeves and delights in how the overshirt falls inelegantly to the floor, a victim in the war between their attraction and ire. Strand’s eyes glisten with embers of something that wasn’t there before, and Alex makes quick work of his white undershirt, fingers grazing over the faint hair and smooth, milky white skin of his chest, pale from lack of exposure to the sun. (Not that she’s any better—Seattle is unforgiving when it comes to maintaining a tan.)

Emboldened by—or possibly feeling unequal because of—his exposed torso, Strand’s fingers curl around the bottom of her blouse and raise it over her head. She lifts her arms to the ceiling (to the sky), and he leverages his height to take the top off entirely, dragging the cotton fabric slowly over her arms, her elbows, her wrists.

She’s left in a black bra, bare to the elements. Always the more forward of the unlikely pair, she shimmies out of her jeans, and she flicks them away with her right ankle, kicking them to halfway under the coffee table.

There’s no turning back now. She’s just a little bit terrified.

Strand hovers on the edge of action, hands wringing through the belt loops of his slacks, and she confronts his timidity: “Take off the pants, Richard.”

He complies. She smiles, and leans up to his right ear, struggling on the edges of her toes.

“Come with me,” she murmurs, taking his hand and leading him down the hallway to her bedroom.

Strand closes the door behind them in a note of finality, and she at once recognizes the inevitability of her situation as she surveys the dark shadows cast over his chin, his shoulders, his legs. He removes his boxers and his cock spills out, half-erect with a tepid curiosity.

She snorts at his newfound audacity, and wrenches him onto the bed with a strength that seems to surprise him. His naked body splays out over her rumpled sheets, knees bending over the end of the bed. She climbs onto the bed, his legs quivering between hers, and she goes for the neck, suckling at the place where his earlobe meets his jaw line. His cock spasms to life beneath her, saluting her body. Her fingers ghost the head, enough that he mewls in a very un-Strandlike way into her ear, and she breathes out a laugh into his neck.

His hands encircle her body—at first she thinks in an embrace—until he starts clawing at the bra clasp on her back. He makes quick work of it, and she remembers that it was he, not she, who was married for ten years.

She shrugs out of the bra, and it ends up flung somewhere in the sheets. Strand’s hands close around her breasts as though he were evaluating the ripeness of a cantaloupe at the supermarket. He tenses his grip inquisitively, weighing his options, before his mouth descends to her left breast. She almost thinks he’s playing favorites until he tweaks her right nipple with a pinch of his index finger and thumb, and she exhales her exhilaration into his ear, her hand starting to pump with the rhythm of a six-piston engine.

“Jesus,” she whimpers, and she catches the disapproving glance that reiterates his militant atheism. She squeezes hard on his cock, and his eyes drop to her hand. He chokes out a mixture of protest and pleasure.

She smirks until his hands scrape at the top of her underwear, his muffled exhales a silent plea for more. He starts at her collarbone and whispers kisses down her torso as he tugs off the underwear. Her insides turn to jelly and she loses motor control over her hands, transformed into a giant bundle of nerve endings.

“Roll over,” he mumbles up into the flat planes of her stomach, and she obeys with a graceless flop onto her back.

Strand retreats to the end of the bed, hands running up and down her thighs in teasing slowness until she wraps her ankles around his neck and wrenches him face down into the bed. He grunts in protest, the sound echoing against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, and she squirms closer to his head. The scruff of his chin tickles against her skin, scratching in a way that’s not unpleasant, exactly.

When his mouth finds her core, her whole body disintegrates into gelatin, and she breathes fast and deep in a struggle to maintain consciousness.

“Oh my God,” she whines breathlessly, and she feels him smile into her skin, a quick kiss planted on her clit so she bucks against his head. Blind as a beggar, she feels roughly around until she finds his hair and grabs a fistful. She presses on the back of his head, begging for more, and hopes he finds her faint moans encouraging.

She feels his finger probing into her, a scout exploring unknown territory, before a second joins up and his tongue laps at her center. As the quick force of his fingers and tongue increase in intensity, she starts to vibrate like a phone alarm going off. Her body pulses once, twice, thrice, and she verbalizes her contentment in breathy sighs until she’s muffling her screams with a pillow—she has intensely curious neighbors.

It feels like an eternity until Strand releases her from limbo, and she catches a glimpse of his wet face in the shadows, panting as heavily as her.

“Wow,” she offers, and he huffs out the phantom of a laugh, her fluid dripping off the edge of his lips.

He crawls back up the bed and makes to ask her a question. She cuts him off with a deep kiss, striving to communicate her appreciation with the flicks of her tongue and the strong grip of her hands on his cheeks. Through the struggle of the kiss, she rotates their bodies so she’s back on top. She prefers acting as explorer and instigator with a new partner. (And God, has it been too long. She blames her sleeplessness and her long-incubated attraction to the clueless man lying underneath her).

She surfaces and stretches her body over to the nightstand, praying that the condoms she has there aren’t expired. When she can’t locate her desired item, she rolls off Strand’s bare body and flicks on the light, blinded by the sudden brightness. Unseeing, she wrenches open the nightstand drawer and fumbles for the familiar circle-peg-in-a-square-hole package. At last she locates one.

She switches off the light, preferring the darkness. It better masks her nervousness. Even with men she finds attractive, she still finds the first night nerve-wracking.

Strand runs a soothing hand over her shaking body.

“Something’s wrong?” he asks, focused on her welfare, and suddenly it’s too much after how he’s ignored her the past months, even after they’d re-initiated contact.

She chokes back a snuffle and his arms encircle her again, this time in a simple hug. It’s comforting and friendly and she finds herself falling harder, dreading the surely resultant concussion.

She diverts attention from her distress with a quick kiss to his lips, and she gropes around for his cock to put on the condom. He whines as her hand rubs against it, rising to greet her in desperation. She tears open the package and rolls down the latex, an action that feels almost foreign.

Before she can change her mind (she’s a mess of emotion), she eases herself onto him, hissing as he fills her up. His hands grasp absently and settle on her ass, squeezing in assessment, and then approval.

She rides him like the tide, rising with a bit lip and then falling back onto him with the cresting of each wave. The more she rises and falls, the closer they get to monsoon season, until the seas churn with fervor, and she rocks over him wildly like a ship tossed about on the ocean.

“Uhh,” she hisses as another 50-foot wave hits the decks.

Then comes the tidal wave, and Strand is the tectonic plates of the earth shifting underneath her, his rapid thrusting ascending to meet her in the slapping kiss of wet flesh.

“Fuck, Alex,” he moans in that deep voice of his as he finishes, and she follows his with a furious bucking of her hips. This time she screams, concerns for her neighbors lost in the deluge of firing nerve endings.

She collapses on top of him and he showers her in kisses, throwing his tepid hesitation overboard and embracing her as if she’s the new sextant he’ll guide the path of his life by.

“Jesus,” she murmurs into his chin, and rolls off onto his side. “I don’t even know where half my clothes are.”

As they breathe, as the waters still, the awkwardness settles over them. Strand shifts in discomfort next to her, and she gropes for his shoulder.

“I can’t—I don’t—Alex, was this just—”

“It’s late,” she says, motioning to the clock. “Just stay.”

He nods his understanding, blessedly silent for once in his life, and she smooths her hand over the hairs standing on end on his arm.

“Goodnight.”

He soon falls asleep with his back to her, but she’s cursed with insomnia. She tries sleeping against him, and while her forehead finds comfort in the warmth of his back and the tranquility of his slow breath, slumber still eludes her.

She falls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, wishing she could see the stars.


End file.
